City of Helsinki (Finland) together with the finnish cities of Tampere and Espoo and The Association of Local and Regional Authorities have made petition to the Committee on Petitions of the European Parliament regarding energy performance certificates in public service buildings.
They appeal to the European Parliament to accept the Display label for use as an energy performance certificate in accordance with Directive 2010/31/EU for existing public buildings within the Member States of the EU.

Everybody can support the petition

"We hope that many of you are willing to support our petition. To be able to do that you just register to the petition portal and click support.
In addition what is mentioned in our petition, I would like to pay your attention to proposal for the amending of EPBD (30.11.2016), where it is proposed that renovations are to be assessed by comparing EPCs before and after renovations. This is a feature which is already possible in Display and in very visible way."Ulla Soitinaho - Energy efficiency manager in the city of Helsinki

While last week’s COP22 highlighted the need for stronger North-South cooperation, Energy Cities presented in Marrakech the ADEME-supported Display® Campaign to cities within the Maghreb.

During this side event titled ‘Display®, let your buildings talk’ Ian Turner provided a background of the Display® campaign and the success that it has achieved in Europe over the last decade. He explained how hundreds of cities across Europe have been able to interact with public buildings users’ to sensitise and communicate the importance of energy efficiency and water conservation in public buildings.

Thierry Meraud from the French Energy Agency ADEME opened up the session with an introduction to his Agency and the role that they play in promoting the energy transition in France and the Maghreb.

Councillor Daniel Guillotin illustrated how within the city and metropole of Rennes, Display® has played an important tool over the last decade in helping combat climate change. Within the area of Rennes each year they organise a friendly competition between the towns. Each town competes against the other to reduce the energy and water consumption of their buildings. Display is used to show the savings achieved per building category.

Adnane Al Ghazi from the Morrocan city of Oujda (450,000 inhabitants, Morocco) provided a quick overview of the Sustainable Energy Action plan (SEAP) . As new Display users, the city will be able to now visualise the energy and water usage of their public buildings. The very first Display® poster of the city hall revealed a poor water performance of the building and triggered investigations on the reasons and planning solutions. Oujda will now be working with their twin city Lille, with Display® as a common working tool.

The presentations were followed by fruitful debate with participants around future possibilities of making Display® more smart by linking the poster to smart metres.

The EU campaign Display, launched as early as in 2004, is an information tool to raise the public awareness. Designed by energy experts from European cities and based on operational rating and easy to understand, the certificate displays the energy, water and climate performance of a building. This Display poster combined with further awareness-raising activities involving building users has proven very successful in increasing behaviour change of building users and stimulating renovation in both public and privately-owned buildings.

A petition to support the Display label
In a petition addressed to the European Parliament last week, the cities of Helsinki, Tampere and Espoo as well as the Finnish Association of Local Authorities call for the recognition of the Display label as a valuable EU energy performance certificate that is fully in line with the EPBD directive. This label “meets the requirements of the directive. It is quick and inexpensive to make (…), visually familiar and impressive (...) and known in the majority of EU member states” they explain.

The petition is also an opportunity for European cities to support Display to become the common voluntary European energy certification for non-residential buildings. In the 2010 recast of the Directive on the energy performance of buildings (EPBD), the European Commission was required to design a common voluntary European energy certification for non-residential buildings. However, its introduction by 2016 still remains uncertain as Member States to date have not reached an agreement on a common scheme.

The shortcomings of the EPBD for public authorities
The European Performance of Buildings Directive, adopted in 2002, and that entered into force over the last decade, introduced energy performance certificates for the sale, rental and construction of residential and commercial buildings in order to make energy consumption more visible and stimulate energy efficient building renovation. The public sector was expected to take the lead by displaying energy certificates in "prominent" places in public buildings. First this was done by hundreds of European local authorities thanks to the Display campaign and then, when national governments were ready, via the official national or regional certificates. However, as each country or region was responsible for choosing their methodology, no common calculation method was designed resulting in diverse methods, costs and reliability.

For the City of Helsinki, “Display city” from the very beginning, for example, to implement their National methodology would mean approximately €2-2.5 million of additional costs.

Supporting the petition
Energy Cities invites European cities and stakeholders in the building sector to sign the petition (soon to be published on the petitions portal of the European Parliament). For more information, you can contact Peter Schilken from Energy Cities (peter.schilken@energy-cities.eu) and Ulla Soitinaho from the city of Helsinki (Ulla.Soitinaho@hel.fi).

Thanks to the support from the French Environment and Energy Management Agency (ADEME) Display® is being promoted in the Maghreb.

At the beginning of February Ian Turner and Sylvie Lacassagne were invited to Algeria as part of an international conference co-organised by ADEME and their Algerian equivalent APRUE.

As the event focussed on energy efficiency in buildings this was an ideal opportunity to introduce Display® to the Algerians working with buildings. The Display® team was able to meet with city representatives from Algiers centre and Boumerdès and present the tools and poster which are now available in Arabic. There is still some work to go to see the first Display® poster unveiled in public but there is a lot of interest to ensure that Display® is adapted to the cultural needs of the region.

Display: what now?

11 December 2015, par | 1777 Visites

The time has come for us to find out which services are still being used, and what aspects of Display are in need of an update.

Firstly, thank you for your loyalty. Display has been active for over a decade now and due to your efforts has seen much success. The campaign has always relied on your participation and we would now like to find out how the service could be optimised for your improved enjoyment.

Therefore we ask you to spare a few minutes to fill out the following short survey, so we can provide a more efficient and effective service for the current and future Display users.

Energy Cities is happy to announce that we have been officially invited, by the European Union Commission, to take part in the consultation process for the Energy Performance Buildings Directive (EPBD). The objective of this consultation is to consult stakeholders on the review of the EPBD and evaluate whether the Directive has met its aims.

Of the seventy-nine questions provided by the Commission, Energy Cities have extracted three where we would appreciate the direct input from Displayers:

Area A: Overall Assessment of the EPBD;

Context:

Currently, about 35% of the EU’s buildings are above 50 years old. Buildings are responsible for 40% of energy consumption and 36% of CO2 emissions in the EU, and consume, on average, about 25 litres of heating oil per square metre per year. Some buildings even require up to 60 litres.

Question 1: Has the EPBD helped to increase renovation (more than 25% of the surface of the building envelope) rates?

Area B : Financing Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy in Buildings and Creation of Markets;

Context:

The EU has been supporting the improvement of the energy performance of buildings for many years with a range of financial support programmes.

Question 2: What are the best financing tools the EU could offer to help citizens and Member States facilitate deep renovations?

Area 3 : Energy Poverty and Affordability of Housing;

Context :

Energy poverty affects living conditions and health. It has many causes, including a combination of low income and general poverty conditions, energy-inefficient homes and a housing tenure system that fails to encourage energy efficiency.

Question 3: Has tackling energy poverty been a requirements when constructing new buildings and renovating existing buildings in Member States?

If you have an answer to any of the three questions above, please do not hesitate to respond. Furthermore please feel free to add any relevant feedback regarding the three consultation areas that you feel should be included in our review of the EPBD.

The public consultation runs until the end of October. We therefore ask that you send any answers or relevant information to the project manager, Peter Schilken (peter.schilken@energy-cities.eu), by the 28th of October 2015.

The European Energy Efficiency Directive, applicable in December 2012, requests
Member States to renovate their buildings with a rate of 3% per year. The initial proposal of the European Commission targeted all public buildings, an objective that Energy Cities, coordinator of the European Display® Campaign, has always supported. Indeed, a 3% rate implies the renovation of the entire building stock by 2050.

Energy Cities continues to encourage local authorities and associations of local authorities in all European countries to commit to achieve this 3% goal, together with their governments. For this reason, Energy Cities joined the Renovate Europe Campaign, a European campaign for the renovation of buildings. Display® is one of the communication tools to publicly communicable the reduction of energy consumption thanks to renovation measures.

Thanks to contributions from Displayers, be inspired in the new publication of the Display® campaign by renovation best practices from European local authorities, including detailed measures and their cost, based on the « building statistics Display® poster ». These Displayers are showing the way towards deep renovation of public buildings at large scale !